Rational Choice or Market Theory Perspective

Many reformers maintain that market-style mechanisms of consumer choice and competition between autonomous schools will encourage diverse and innovative approaches (Friedman, 1955, 1962; Chubb & Moe, 1990), resulting in a “rising tide” that improves all schools (Hoxby, 2003, p. 287). The assumption is that as school choice undercuts bureaucratic political control of public education, it provides educators in schools of choice the opportunity and motivation to experiment with new organizational and instructional strategies for improving student achievement.

The mechanism of school choice gives parents the opportunity to pursue non-traditional schooling options for their children. Proponents argue that providing this freedom not only diversifies educational opportunities, but also creates incentives for traditional public schools to improve through increased market competition for services (see Chapters 11 and 16 of this volume). For example, Chubb and Moe (1990) have argued that, as choice allows market-like competition to increase and bureaucratic structures to decline, it provides parents with greater opportunities for home–school interaction and schools with greater openness to parents’ demands. Supporters of de-bureaucratization contend that parents, especially low-income and parents of students of color, will be less intimidated by the schools and more willing to make their needs known to school personnel, resulting in school processes that will lead to improved student outcomes (see Walberg & Bast, 2003).

Central to the market orientation of the school choice mechanism is rational choice or market theory, which suggests individuals will consistently choose alternatives that they believe maximize the utility of their preferences (see Becker, 1986; Coleman, 1990, 1992; Coleman & Fararo, 1992; Breen & Goldthorpe, 1997). Broadly speaking, rational choice theory (RCT) posits that individuals act out of self-interest; that is, they act only in terms of their personal preferences, and are rational in that they methodically order all choices from most to least desired. From a sociological perspective, RCT is focused on the behavior of social systems, implying a back-and-forth focus on behavior at the social system and individual levels of behaviors (the macro–micro problem) (Coleman, 1990). Notably, many sociologists no longer use the term “rational choice,” but have moved on to debates that have the same arguments with different labels, such as “social mechanisms” or “analytical sociology” and the role of intentions, beliefs, desires, and opportunities in determining behavior (see Hedström, 2005; Gross, 2009; Frye, 2012; Kroneberg & Kalter, 2012; Little, 2012; Manzo, 2012; Opp, 2013). Thus, sociologists who used to call themselves rational choice theorists now call themselves “analytical sociologists” to avoid the baggage that came with RCT. Because many educational researchers continue to use the rational choice term, however (see Chapters 1, 16, 19, 25, and 26 of this volume), I continue to use it in this chapter. ¹

When RCT is applied to school choice, three factors of the parental decision-making process emerge: information, available choices, and a cost-benefit analysis of the best option (Bast & Walberg, 2004). Researchers applying rational choice to schools assume that schooling markets are open, fair, and unbiased (Bell, 2009). They hypothesize that the selection process results in both allocative efficiency, or a better match between goods and services and consumer preferences, and productive efficiency, whereby schools are pressured to provide better services in a more efficient manner (see Schneider, Teske, & Marschall, 2000; Lubienski & Lubienski, 2013). Coleman (1992) went further, stating that parental choice options frame schools within a quasi-market mechanism. Schools are then compelled to react by attracting new parents and/or to improve to prevent parents from being lured toward better schools.

Institutional Perspective

A contrasting social theory to RCT on the consequences of school choice rests with the institutional perspective. Stemming from broader organizational analysis, this “new institutionalism” was developed by John Meyer and colleagues over several decades (Meyer, 1977; Meyer & Rowan, 1977, 1978; Powell & DiMaggio, 1991; Scott & Meyer, 1994; Scott & Davis, 2007; Scott, 2014). It characterizes schools as institutions with persistent patterns of social action that individuals take for granted. That is, rather than making a rational choice based on full information and ranked preferences, individuals make choices because they can conceive of no alternative; “routines are followed because they are taken for granted as the ‘way we do these things’” (Scott, 2014, p. 57).

Agreeing with rational choice theorists about the bureaucratic form of schooling that dominates the public school sector in the United States (and many other countries), institutional theorists take a different tack in their analysis of the education environment. For instance, they argue that the increase in bureaucratization of schools has led to an increase in coordination among the nested layers of the education system—from the federal government to the state, districts, schools, and classrooms. This has resulted in a set of taken-for-granted categories or rules, called ritual classifications, that define the actions of schools, teachers, and students (e.g., Meyer & Rowan, 1977, 1978). Over time these ritual classifications become institutionalized and accepted as the norm for what constitutes legitimate school and schooling activities (Bidwell & Dreeben, 2006).

Examples include certified teachers, instructional time, standardized curriculum subjects, age-based classes of reasonable size, and use of curricular materials. In large part, these rules have shaped schools, whatever the type in whatever sector, making them look much more alike than different. Institutional theorists refer to this as isomorphism and have documented its diffusion both in the U.S. and throughout the world (Meyer & Ramirez, 2000; Baker, 2014).

To legitimize themselves within the broader community, schools’ compliance with ritual classifications is important—more important, according to institutional theorists, than maximizing efficiency of school operations (Meyer & Rowan, 1977; Scott & Meyer, 1994). In other words, schools adapt to their environments by adopting accepted rules and structures, leaving actual classroom instruction and learning relatively unexamined and unmonitored. Such loose coupling helps schools maintain their validity and legitimacy (Weick, 1976) and is further promoted by schools’ logic of confidence that delegates instruction to teacher professionals who ultimately control what goes on inside their classrooms.

DiMaggio and Powell (1983) argued that there are different types of environmental pressures on organizations to make them more similar than different. These pressures include coercive isomorphism, which stems from formal and informal pressures by organizations and groups on which the school depends (e.g., federal and state mandates); mimetic isomorphism, which stems from the adoption of similar structures and practices when facing uncertain tasks; and normative isomorphism, which stems primarily from professionalization of educators and professional networks.

School Choice Research and the Institutional Perspective

When applied to school choice—including public charter, magnet, and private schools, and homeschooling arrangements—institutional theory emphasizes that all schools operate within highly institutionalized environments, which shape what counts as legitimate schooling. All types of schools, no matter the sector or organizational form, adopt rituals, norms, and myths to support their legitimacy (Meyer & Rowan, 1977, 1978; Scott & Davis, 2007; Scott, 2014). Thus, even schools of choice pay attention to institutional rules such as teacher certification, curricular subject matter, instructional time, reasonable class size, and mostly age-based grade organization.

Although institutional theory provides a perspective that counters the rational choice theory, few empirical studies within the context of choice have relied directly on it. One such study is Huerta’s (2009), which used institutional theory as an analytic tool to understand the organization of a charter middle school in California. The aim of his study was to examine whether a school in a decentralized context exercises greater innovation in terms of the way it organizes and adopts new teaching and learning strategies—resisting the institutional pressures to look like other schools.

Specifically, Huerta examined various aspects of a predominately Latinx, working-class school over several years, covering its early formation to its bid for renewing its charter. Initially, teachers and administrators held a shared governance arrangement in which decisions were made collectively and administrative duties were shared. The school’s aim was to make changes in teaching and learning at the expense of conforming to larger institutional rules and expectations. However, gradually the school began adopting a more traditional governance structure. Thus, rather than shared decision-making and administrative duties, teachers focused their energies on the classroom, while the principal assumed oversight of administration, and all of them increasingly clarified and codified job titles, roles, and tasks. And as the school prepared to renew its charter, which the authorizer stated would depend on institutional definitions of schools (e.g., staffing ratios, standardized academic programs), the transformation into a more traditional-looking school occurred.

Applying and building on institutional theory, Huerta emphasized the micro-level processes that contribute to the institutionalization of schools (see also Coburn, 2004). He concluded that charter schools may be forced to balance internal goals for instructional processes and innovation with external controls that pull schools toward conformity with demands of the broader community. His findings are helpful in exposing some of the underlying processes in schools that are consistent with institutional theory.

Other studies have found that schools of choice may differ in the ways they are organized compared with traditional public schools. For instance, in a review of the possible mechanisms that explain the positive effects of charter schools on student achievement, Gleason (2019) pointed to longer school days (or years), comprehensive behavioral policies with rewards and sanctions, a school mission that prioritizes improving student achievement, giving teachers feedback, the use of data to help teachers improve their instructional practice, and providing tutoring to students. In an exploratory national study, Berends, Peñaloza, Cannata, and Goldring (2019) found that compared with matched traditional public schools, charter schools were more likely to have a values-based curriculum, student work focused on long-term investigations and real-life projects providing authentic learning experiences, cooperative learning strategies, and student collaboration with outside experts.

Yet, not all research reveals that schools of choice are implementing innovative organizational and instructional practices. Preston, Goldring, Berends, and Cannata (2012) examined the nationally representative Schools and Staffing Survey to determine whether charter schools are more innovative when compared with traditional public schools in the nearby school district. On the whole, they found that charter schools were not more innovative, a finding similar to other reviews of the research on school choice (Lubienski, 2003; Wohlstetter, Smith, & Farrell, 2013). In a national study of charter and matched traditional public schools, Berends and Donaldson (2016) found that charter schools had less selective placements of students in high ability groups and a more even distribution of students across ability groups compared with traditional public schools. However, because the effects of ability grouping on student achievement in both charter and traditional public schools contribute to inequalities found in the broader literature (Gamoran, 2010), they concluded that this provides evidence more consistent with institutional vis-à-vis RCT theory.

Although the extant research cited above focuses mainly on charter schools, school choice has many forms, each of which—proponents argue—provides a way to challenge the bureaucratic nature of public schooling within the U.S. by introducing significant innovation. When choice is introduced, freedom from regulations closely follows (see Chapter 4 of this volume). Thus, one would expect that autonomy would lead to changing the technical aspects of schools rather than the norms and rules of the environment. Schools should exhibit less isomorphism, have less bureaucratic formal organizational structures, and be more tightly coupled around the technical aspects of the organization (see Davies & Quirke, 2006). Research to date remains rather thin and inconclusive, so a fruitful line of future inquiry is to examine these hypotheses in a variety of samples that include different types of school choice options.

Social Capital Perspective

Several researchers have argued that social capital is important for school reform efforts, social and academic learning environments, and student learning (Coleman, 1988; Portes, 1998; Bryk & Schneider, 2002). As Bourdieu (1986) and Coleman (1988, 1990) articulated, social capital refers to the social relations between persons—including obligations and trust, information, and norms and sanctions—that provide resources for achieving certain goals (such as improvements in student learning). Those familiar with the work of Bourdieu (1984, 1986, 1990) and the rational choice perspective of Coleman (1990) may question the conciliatory discussion of these two sociologists. However, my aim here is to focus on the concept of social capital to further our understanding of schooling processes rather than test the differences between Bourdieu’s and Coleman’s larger theoretical perspectives.

Networks of administrators, teachers, parents, and children generate social capital at the school level as a means to create an educational setting conducive to the exchange of social norms and information (Hallinan, 2010). It can be understood as a group resource that promotes the success of students through the function of trust mechanisms (Bryk & Schneider, 2002), such that all network members believe in the expectation that others will act reliably and confidently (Coleman, 1990). Schools that foster relationships bound by high degrees of social capital facilitate students’ academic success (Hallinan, 2010; Freeman & Condron, 2011), and improving the social capital of disadvantaged students may significantly reduce inequalities between those from different socioeconomic and racial/ethnic groups (Hasan & Bagde, 2013).

Social Organization of Schooling Perspective

In addition to studies of social capital, sociologists have a long tradition of examining the organization of schools, emphasizing the structures and processes that occur among and within different types (see Gamoran, Secada, & Marrett, 2000; Schneider, 2003; Berends, 2015). Since the first Coleman report in 1966, researchers have considered the relationship between school factors and student achievement, looking especially at how schools’ structures and processes correlate with the societal stratification of educational, occupational, and economic opportunities. Studies have shown that, although student achievement varies among schools, the differences among classrooms and teachers are critical for student achievement growth (see Goldhaber, Lavery, & Theobald, 2016; Hanushek, 2016). A central focus in this line of research is what goes on inside the “black box” of schools and how school and schooling factors contribute to both social inequality and productivity (Berends, 2015).

Sociologists have argued for the importance of understanding the social relationships that occur within schools, particularly the interaction within classrooms, because these experiences provide students with the most immediate socialization (Bidwell, 1972; Gamoran, Nystrand, Berends, & LePore, 1995). For instance, Waller (1932) argued that the give and take during classroom instruction constitutes the “nucleus” of the school (p. 33) and Bidwell (1972) emphasized studying the immediate social relations of students in schools and classrooms to discover “fairly sizable effects on students” (p. 5). Many researchers have followed in this tradition (see Gamoran et al., 2000; Schneider, 2003; Berends, 2015; Waddington & Berends, 2018).

In addition to examining relationships within schools and classrooms, sociologists also emphasize understanding the collective nature of schools, particularly when considering different types of schools of choice. Bidwell and Dreeben (2006) pointed out the importance of examining the collective properties of schools to understand “why they take the organizational forms they do, operate the way they do, and produce what they do” (p. 10).

Understanding schools as organizations provides an avenue for addressing the more macro rational choice and institutional theories described above. That is, by illuminating the structures and processes of different types of schools of choice (e.g., private, magnet, charter), a school organizational perspective can shed light on the hypotheses derived from the rational choice theory (e.g., autonomy fosters innovation) and from the institutional theory (e.g., environmental pressures make schools more alike than different). Social capital theory might be viewed as a component of school organizational theory in that social capital comprises a specific set of social processes that may mediate school choice effects.

Conclusion

In this chapter, I reviewed several social perspectives on choice: rational choice theory, institutional theory, social capital theory, and the social organization of schooling perspective. Although rational choice theory provides a rationale for many forms of school choice, its assumptions are open to question (see Chapters 1, 16, 19, 25, and 26 of this volume). As an alternative, institutional theory predicts that school choice will not result in widespread innovation and different school organizational forms, but the school choice research base informing this perspective remains sparse. Social capital theory provides a lens to understand how the face-to-face social relationships among individuals and groups can promote certain goals and outcomes, but most of the existing research has been limited to examining Catholic or charter schools and lacks rigorous research designs. Similarly, the social organization of schooling perspective has been limited to dated comparisons between Catholic and public schools, though the studies in the Catholic sector provide a model for examining other areas of school choice, particularly charter, magnet, and other private schools.

The rationale for school choice is that providing autonomy, innovation, and accountability will allow schools of choice to operate more effectively vis-à-vis regular public schools. However, existing research has not provided conclusive findings one way or the other. For years, the usefulness of educational research to policymakers and educators has been challenged by the fact that knowing the characteristics of effective schools does not necessarily translate into creating such schools at scale (see Berends, 2014). Moreover, from a policy perspective, school choice is not a discrete treatment that leads to consistent, robust effects (Hess & Loveless, 2005). It may be, for example, that schools of choice are highly effective with certain curricula alignment and data-focused instructional strategies, while choice schools without these specific conditions (or those that allow teachers to be completely autonomous in their individual classrooms) are not effective at all.

Overall, because the research on the effects of school choice on achievement are heterogeneous, we know that some schools are likely to be more effective than others. For learning why this is so, the social organization of schools (informed by the ideas of social capital theory) provides a promising perspective. Only by gathering measures of school effectiveness—with a particular focus on a variety of data on organization, structures, and processes—will we be able to understand the conditions under which different school types improve student learning and other outcomes.